On March 27, 2025, update 63.6 for ARK: Survival Ascended was released, bringing significant new features and adjustments for servers and clients.
New Content:
In "Lost Colony," players take on the role of the legendary survivor Mei Yin and embark on an intense journey to Arat Prime, the origin of the ARKs. There, they encounter new, exotic creatures, unlock powerful "Lost" skill trees, craft "Cursed" equipment, and master advanced new building systems (presumably from ARK 2).
You can easily picture the scenario: Snail-Boss Shi Hai is relaxing on a Sunday evening with a round of Subnautica to briefly escape the stress of slowly but surely driving the AKR franchise, "captured" by Wildcard, into the ground. The next morning, he takes a look at the Steam player numbers and is horrified to find that many long-time ARK: Survival Evolved players are still not ready to switch to ARK: Survival Ascended – let alone pre-order ARK 2.
Deinotherium, also known as Dinotherium or "tusked elephant," belongs to the extinct group of proboscideans and was an early and very successful representative of this animal group. It lived from the Miocene to the early Pleistocene, approximately 22 million to 1 million years ago, in large parts of the Old World. Particularly later forms of this genus reached gigantic sizes and were among the largest land mammals of their time.
While ARK already offers a variety of theropods, there has not been a megaraptorid until now. This changes with the new community winner of the creature vote. With over 32,000 votes, the Megaraptor has been chosen as the next dino for Valguero, and its debut promises to elevate hunting and fighting in ARK to a whole new level.
On the Bukanier Cluster, you can expect a perfectly balanced gaming experience. For a pleasant yet exciting gameplay, we have increased the game rates: Harvesting (3x), Taming (4x), and Breeding (24x) ensure a smooth gaming flow. Our mods are intentionally chosen to be minimalistic, preserving the original vanilla game feel while providing meaningful enhancements. This guarantees high stability, especially regarding the upcoming upgrade to the new Unreal Engine 5.5.
Our helpful mods include:
With the release of Astraeos, the German modder Nekatus has further established himself as a key figure in the ARK community. Following his successful work on Valguero, Fjordur, and Svartalfheim, he is now launching his first official, paid map for ARK: Survival Ascended. But how did the development process unfold? What makes Astraeos special, and what plans are there for the future?
This is only needed in rare cases where a server mod wants to access a library (DLL) xaudio.dll and this is not present in an installation like https://github.com/mschnitzer/ark-survival-ascended-linux-container-image with Docker/Proton. Because usually a server does not require audio functions!
In such a situation, the server crashes immediately after starting; the following is visible in crashcallstack.txt (excerpt):
The wait is over – Astraeos, the stunning map by Nekatus, sponsored by Nitrado, is officially released as a partner DLC! Originally planned as our premium map surprise for June, we are bringing you this mythical world earlier than expected. Starting today, it is available for $14.99 as a fully integrated DLC – instead of a premium mod.
A new cluster "bukanier.org" for ARK Survival Ascended is in preparation. It will be a rather small cluster with The Island as the home map (PVE for now, as no safe base shield is available) and the PVP maps Scorched Earth, Aberration, and Extinction. Additionally, DLC maps like Center and other future maps will be available in a daily rotation.
Whether a second future map (e.g., Ragnarok or Astraeos) will be defined as a home map in addition to The Island will be reviewed at the appropriate time (also meaning +20 EUR per month).
